Miscellaneous News

supercat

Colonel
Least cucked, least self loathing asian
The Japanese are the "honorary white men", no kidding.

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Most Americans believe this tbh. They (rightfully) think politicians are creating boogeymen but that at the end of the day they're still and always will be the best.
Reminds me of another ignoramus who can't figure out a single thing that China gives to the world.

"Interesting" argument. I have no comments.

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Well, call it the conspiracy theory, but I believe that the US and many other Western "democracies" are actually ruled by a cabal of international financiers and bankers (those who really control the financial capital) behind the scene and the presidential elections are just a charade.

Yup, one of the reasons to ban the TikTok is the antisemitic...er, anti-zonist content, as described by the CEO of the ADL.

I find it hard to believe that dems are gonna lose young votes to the republicans over a chinese app
Well, they have to cater to their biggest donors, young voters be damned.

BTW, TikTok isn't really a Chinese company.

The wisdom of some politicians in the US is really limitless: "TikTok is like a Chinese spy balloon in your phone".

This month is Ramadan. So Uyghurs are prohibited from fasting!
 

LawLeadsToPeace

Senior Member
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
Registered Member
Judge don't need to appease people. Once they are elected they are in. Politicians need to appease people to win the next election. Judge don't. Judges are selected based on their predisposition. If you know he is conservative, he will make conservative judgment without the need to appease anyone.
I'm basing my argument on the idea of having elections on an interval, not the current system.
 
A

azn_cyniq

Guest
I find it hard to believe that dems are gonna lose young votes to the republicans over a chinese app
Four years ago I would have said the same thing.

Recently, I was on the subway in New York City and literally every single person around me was using TikTok. I could tell that they were using TikTok and not Reels or Shorts. The software engineers at Meta and YouTube aren't that great, so Reels and Shorts are terrible compared to TikTok and cannot compete with it unless it is banned. Among young people, TikTok is really, really popular. It would not be an exaggeration to say that for many young people, TikTok has replaced the television. Obviously this isn't a matter of life or death, but most young people really enjoy using TikTok. If the Democrats take that away, they'll lose a lot of votes.

I have a Korean TV and I use it pretty often. If the Democrats took my TV away, I would probably vote against them.
 

alfreddango

Junior Member
Registered Member
Four years ago I would have said the same thing.

Recently, I was on the subway in New York City and literally every single person around me was using TikTok. I could tell that they were using TikTok and not Reels or Shorts. The software engineers at Meta and YouTube aren't that great, so Reels and Shorts are terrible compared to TikTok and cannot compete with it unless it is banned. Among young people, TikTok is really, really popular. It would not be an exaggeration to say that for many young people, TikTok has replaced the television. Obviously this isn't a matter of life or death, but most young people really enjoy using TikTok. If the Democrats take that away, they'll lose a lot of votes.

I have a Korean TV and I use it pretty often. If the Democrats took my TV away, I would probably vote against them.
I get what you mean, but idk, nowadays people get over stuff pretty quickly, e.g. the abortion thing, it was talked about as if the second french revolution was upon us, and it fizzled out anyway

the way I see it, chinese administrators are more interested in finding a deal, I'd be very surprised if they let it just burn instead of selling it to an american company
if it just switches owners, users will only be mildly inconvenienced
 

siegecrossbow

Field Marshall
Staff member
Super Moderator
Four years ago I would have said the same thing.

Recently, I was on the subway in New York City and literally every single person around me was using TikTok. I could tell that they were using TikTok and not Reels or Shorts. The software engineers at Meta and YouTube aren't that great, so Reels and Shorts are terrible compared to TikTok and cannot compete with it unless it is banned. Among young people, TikTok is really, really popular. It would not be an exaggeration to say that for many young people, TikTok has replaced the television. Obviously this isn't a matter of life or death, but most young people really enjoy using TikTok. If the Democrats take that away, they'll lose a lot of votes.

I have a Korean TV and I use it pretty often. If the Democrats took my TV away, I would probably vote against them.

It has nothing to do with SWE, who are mostly worker bees, but the algorithm behind Tiktok. China has banned ByteDance from selling it or sharing it with foreigners.
 

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
Got this idea about the coming TikTok ban law from the US Congress, and I believe it is all bullshit.

I am not a lawyer, so it takes a while for me to figure out what they are saying in plain English, or lawyerly English.

There is a difference between the words, "Ban," and, "Unavailable."

The US Congress legislation pertaining to TikTok, does not "ban" TikTok, it makes TikTok "unavailable" because it would be difficult to find and download.

TikTok would be unavailable for download from Google Play and Apple servers.

The US Congress, being all lawyers, know they cannot ban TikTok, because trying to ban TikTok has be struck down three times, the precedent has been set, and the judges threw it out so quickly that that is a legal dead end. No TikTok ban is possible because of the US Constitution, the highest law in the land.

What I understand of the current legislation, is that TikTok is not being banned, just that it would be illegal for Goggle Play and Apple to offer it for download.

Banning TikTok is not legal according to the courts. Preventing Goggle Play or Apple offering TikTok for download, does not infringe on the Americans First Amendment Rights, the right to free speech.

So that is the bottom line to this. TikTok cannot be banned in America due to the First Amendment. But there is a legal gray zone there, maybe they can prevent Goggle Play or Apple from distributing it.

What is the difference, we might wonder?

Well, this is why this is all bullshit.

Obviously when this goes in front of a judge, they will ask the same thing.

The US government does not want to ban TikTok, because that is against the US Constitution, but making TikTok unavailable for download is not against the US Constitution. At least not yet.

If the judge in this case axes the government lawyers, what is them difference sounds like them same difference, got to expect some weasel words coming out of their mouths.

If anyone wonder why the American people elected Trump in the first place, following this TikTok story, shows why.

What the hell are they doing?

Those US politicians should ax their voters what they want.

The voters do not want a TikTok ban!

Give the people what they don't want, while knowing it is illegal to do that, and this gray zone lawyering is not going to work on some judge, it is not going work on anybody with a couple of active brain cells.

Rule of law!

:D
Today, the US congress has a non white face all over the news defending the ban on TikTok in Congressman Ritchie Torres. He’s trying to spin that the US congress is not banning TikTok. They demanding Bytedance divest. So if TikTok doesn’t divest it’s Bytedance that’s banning TikTok from Americans.

That's what I hate about the Chinese. They seem to go out of their way not to call something what is because they think it’s going to make them look like they’re taking the low road or they’re afraid of offending the other side meaning the established “white” authority that Chinese are taught to respect no matter what. It’s racism and white supremacy at work. They admit to it when they have to bring out a non-white face to cover for them. The West portrays Chinese as evil. Why not call a spade a spade and say regularly the West is motivated by white domination of the world? You don’t have explain it. Just say it all the time in public forums. They’ll go crazy just like Blinken was panicking when China brought up George Floyd. The West is that sensitive and it tells you how the world doesn’t confront them at all over it.

Everyone is trying debate whether or not China has soft power or not. It’s no different how the West says China is not a superpower unless it does what the West says. I’ll tell you what says China is not a superpower. It’s how China does nothing when the West aids in genocide in Gaza while West accuses China genocide with no sort of bombing. China should be organizing countries for a complete boycott of the US until they force Israel to end its bombing campaign. Like the oil embargo of the 70s. The West doesn’t want to see other countries doing the very sanctioning they do on them. When China does that to the West, that’s when China becomes a superpower.
 
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Stierlitz

Junior Member
Registered Member
Everyone is trying debate whether or not China has soft power or not. It’s no different how the West says China is not a superpower unless it does what the West says. I’ll tell you what says China is not a superpower. It’s how China does nothing when the West aids in genocide in Gaza while West accuses China genocide with no sort of bombing. China should be organizing countries for a complete boycott of the US until they force Israel to end its bombing campaign. Like the oil embargo of the 70s. The West doesn’t want to see other countries doing the very sanctioning they do on them. When does that to the West, that’s when China becomes a superpower.
100% agree. I would definitely like to see more asssertive approach from China when it comes to diplomacy/foreign policy. I observe that China is always defending itself against the baseless accusations coming from US/EU. Never does China try to launch diplomatic attacks on the West despite having plenty of ammunition to do so. Why not draft UN resolution condemning illegal US occupation of Syria for example ?

Also I would add that in my view China cannot be considered a superpower until Taiwan province question has been resolved once and for all.
 

MelianPretext

New Member
Registered Member
All right folks, while it’s been interesting to see members here try to make heads and tails of the recent Tiktok developments immediately following another one of the community's bits against “soft power,” some interpretations have become rather ridiculous.

No, the Tiktok ban isn't about AI, or Israel, or the election. The goal of exterminating Tiktok has been a thing since Trump, who tried to sell it to the Republican-supporting CEO of Oracle as a last feather in his cap before the election. That was 4 years ago, before the subsequent GPT AI mania in the public consciousness, and the campaign has been ongoing since 2020. Neither will the tactic of having a Singaporean public face "CEO" and being domiciled in Singapore going to fool anyone on the platform’s true origins. Some here are confusing the useful external rhetoric with the real material context that should be implicitly understood.

What the Tiktok blackmail really amounts to is a test by the US of whether China is willing to submit to a precedent of being treated the same way its subordinates like France has been.
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The inevitably craven French government pretended aloofness and allowed it to happen while French national Alstom executives like Frédéric Pierucci were imprisoned and tortured. Thus, what’s really at stake in the theft of Tiktok is the precedent it will set of allowing the US (and every other adversarial government, for that matter) to steal Chinese technological assets with impunity by broad daylight in front of China itself. As such, the saving grace for Tiktok isn’t going to be the "power" of the American Gen Z “vote", or the same Trump who did it first, or Bytedance’s comprador aspirant CEO, or the "fair-mindedness" of the US courts. The only thing that will stop this expropriation attempt is China itself, under its technological export restriction law promulgated specifically as a reaction to the Trump era forced sale attempt, which bans the sale of sensitive algorithms like Tiktok’s without Chinese regulatory approval.

With this in mind, as has always been the case ever since Trump-Oracle's 2020 theft attempt 4 years ago, it would be better for China to allow its outright ban in the US (and whichever subsequent bandwagon countries that follow the US' lead) than allow a long lasting working precedent to be set that legitimates future expropriation of Chinese assets, which in this case would also directly flaunt China’s 2020 export restriction law. The banning of US Tiktok is secondary to the threat of the expropriation precedent.

Yet another thing that should be mentioned is that Tiktok really does unironically pose a genuine “threat” to the US state apparatus. All the media noise following the Twitter Files obfuscated the official confirmation it gave that every single US social media platform has active communication channels to US intelligence/military/state personnel, connected by working relationships via email. They reveal the latter sent regular directives on which US propaganda accounts/content to artificially boost and on which accounts whose content disrupts US narratives to “algorithmically” suppress visibility, censor and ban. While Tiktok Global has already been couped internally by US personnel including ex-NSA officials, the official link to its parent company makes the recreation of a similar communication channel with Tiktok Global vulnerable of exposure to Bytedance, at least “psychologically” from the US OpSec perspective.

Through this, Tiktok is the only major social media platform in the entire English speaking world not entirely beholden to US state manipulation. This makes the short form app, with no exaggeration, a genuine challenge to the complete US hegemonic monopoly over social media and its ability to deplatform opposition and dissident voices not just in the West but in every country on the planet which lacks indigenously operated social media platforms (which is to say nearly every country with the exception of China itself).

These are the real reasons why Tiktok is once again being subjected to this latest expropriation attempt and why the US has been actively trying to steal Tiktok continuously for the past 4 years. Its reasons for doing so have perennial motive which are irrespective of whatever outlying current excuse some may believe as the "driving rationales." With bipartisan and unanimous agreement towards its theft as recent events show, the US is evidently clear eyed on its true intentions towards Tiktok and some members here should reciprocate a sober clearheadedness in kind towards recognizing what is really at stake in the eyes of the US state.
 
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